Ashley Bergeron had plans to be home in Nashville for Christmas morning, but a nagging feeling told her to make a last minute change of plans. The next morning, she woke up to the news that a suicidal man had detonated a bomb on historic Second Avenue, destroying a huge swath of it. The blast shook her home and workshop, Studio 208 on Third Avenue, and shattered some of her exhibits, which now lay in colorful pieces of glass in the streets.
Still, Bergeron counted her blessings that she wasn’t home, and despite losing a major piece of art, the rest of her gallery had survived, even after being thrown across the studio.
“It really was a Christmas miracle,” she said.
With the number of disasters Nashville experienced in the past year, damaged buildings were nothing new. Last year’s racial justice protests rocked downtown Nashville, and before that, tornadoes left a path of destruction through Middle Tennessee. While the Christmas bombing displaced many residents and businesses, people grew paranoid of what lay around the corner.
Several months later, much of the area within the blast’s radius is still under construction and closed off to the public. Now, instead of hosting a parade of people for the summer, tourists took pictures of what was left of Second Avenue’s once lively boutiques and restaurants.